Political Graphics in LAhttp://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics
A Haverford College BlogThu, 23 Jun 2011 18:25:49 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.3All’s Well…http://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/2011/06/23/alls-well/
http://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/2011/06/23/alls-well/#commentsThu, 23 Jun 2011 18:25:49 +0000http://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/?p=69Continue reading →]]>As I write this I am already back in the horrid humidity that is the entirety of the East Coast and feel luckier than ever to have had the chance to escape it for one glorious month. Kyle and I would like to thank CSPG, The Hurtford Humanities Center (James Weissinger and Emily Cronin!), Theresa Tensuan and Kristin Lindgren, as well as the good folks behind the Louis Green Fund who made all of this awesomeness possible. Seriously, this has been phenomenal.

On our last day at CSPG, the staff ordered delicious pizza and salad in honor of our departure. Here we all are:

Sherry the volunteer, Carol the director, Gloria the Getty intern, Joy the archivist (and our supervisor), Kyle the Kyle, Mary the other director, Alayna the administrative assistant, Anna the other Getty intern, and the I who is I.

Kyle and I got some pretty sweet parting gifts, including these lovely calendars. Huzzah for political art! It’s been a thrill.

]]>http://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/2011/06/23/alls-well/feed/0All work and no play…http://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/2011/06/19/all-work-and-no-play/
http://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/2011/06/19/all-work-and-no-play/#commentsSun, 19 Jun 2011 06:37:43 +0000http://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/?p=39Continue reading →]]>As Kyle and I are getting dangerously near the end of our time here in LA, I thought I’d at least give you a snippet of some fun, non-work-related activities that we’d been up to.

First off, did the typical touristy things:

and even went to the much-acclaimed In-N-Out Burger

We then went to the only Silent Movie Theater in the country

Went to the Griffith Park Observatory (where, by the way, the final showdown in Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle takes place)

and saw some improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater (where like half the SNL cast got their start)

Met up with friends at Souplantation,

at Universal City

and at Venice Beach

(really, they drove us down to Venice Beach)

We experienced the boardwalk

and dipped our toes in the ocean

Shopped in Koreatown (since that’s where we lived/where our sublet was conveniently located)

And ventured into Beverly Hills

We stopped by the flea market on Melrose

Visited the L.A.C.M.A.

Walked around Chinatown,

Little Tokyo,

and Olvera Street

…among other things.

Most importantly, however, we found ourselves a place that has the best Happy Hour in the world: El Carmen.

And hey, we’ve still got a few days left. There’s still time to explore.

I spend far too much of my time watching TV (current obsessions include The X-Files and Downton Abbey… an odd combination)

I always hold my breath when driving through tunnels.

And finally, I have an unhealthy obsession with parantheticals (in case you couldn’t already tell).

I think Karina’s initial post about the relevance and importance of art in society is a very interesting one, particularly because it makes me think of a quote from the preface of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray that is always rattling around in the back of my head anyway: “All art is quite useless.” While it is unfair for me to remove the context of the quote (in my defense, that preface wraps around itself so much that it becomes nearly inscrutable), it does set up an interesting contrast between the role of art in society and how we perceive it.

Art, to speak in incredibly broad terms, has often been seen as superfluous. Throughout my time in high school, I often found myself engaged in debates about the merits of literature and art (an occasional consequence of having friends who loved science!) which usually boiled down to “Yes, art is often inessential, but it can make life worth living.” I’ll give you a second to roll your eyes. Done? Great.

I now know how wrong I was back then (on multiple levels… stupid cowlick hair). If anything, art is more important to livelihood than anything else man has created because art has the ability to convince you of something without you even realizing it. Propaganda during World War II shaped public opinion about things like rationing and industry so much that many companies used the same tactics after the war ended to maintain the same level of workmanship. Cartoons helped take down machine politics in New York (suck it Boss Tweed!). Images have become so ingrained in our culture that we have become largely unaware of how much of an effect they have on us. What makes art truly amazing is that it can be a mirror that reflects society, a hammer that forcibly shapes it, or a little voice in your ear that tells you how it could be changed. Its versatility is its greatest asset. So, in conclusion, institutions that investigate art’s effect and increase its accessibility for people, like the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG), where Karina and I are currently working, and Haverford’s Humanities Center, should totally get more money.

I’ll get a bit more technical for my next article, I’ll talk a bit about the project that I am currently working on, which involves the work of Seth Tobocman and Peter Kuper, two artists who use elements of comic book and street art to make political statements. Hopefully, it won’t take me nearly as long to ready this next post!

]]>http://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/2011/06/14/i-be-postin/feed/0The Cockroach Problemhttp://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/2011/06/11/the-cockroach-problem/
http://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/2011/06/11/the-cockroach-problem/#commentsSat, 11 Jun 2011 17:34:59 +0000http://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/?p=25Continue reading →]]>This week, Kyle and I (don’t worry his post is coming!) have switched gears entirely and really got into the nitty gritty of things. Having searched through the archive, we pulled posters from the artists that lay in Professor Tensuan’s field of interest and began to analyze. I focused mainly on Lalo Alcaraz, a Mexican-American cartoonist, who is known largely for his nationally syndicated, highly political daily comic strip La Cucaracha (aka the cockroach).

Here are some of his posters:

My favorite, thus far, though is this one:

Background: In late 1991, four officers of the LAPD (Stacey Koon, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, and Theodore Brisenio) were accused of using unnecessary force in a March 3, 1991 beating of“Rodney” Glen King, an African-American motorist. The case known as the Rodney King Trial was based on footage recorded on home video by a bystander (George Holliday). The now famous video was broadcast nationally and caused tremendous response because the beating was believed to be racially motivated. Daryl Gates was the head of the L.A.P.D. at the time and faced strong criticism as well as calls for resignation from the Mayor.

On April 29, 1992 the jury acquitted three of the four officers (Koon, Wind, and Brisenio) and did not reach a verdict on one (Powell). The acquittal led to the infamous 1992 Los Angeles Riots and mass protest around the country.The riots, beginning in the evening after the verdicts, peaked in intensity over the next two days, but ultimately continued for several days. A curfew and deployment of the National Guard began to control the situation; eventually U.S. Army soldiers and marines were ordered to the city to quell disorder as well. Fifty-three people died during the riots with as many as 2,000 people injured. Estimates of the material losses vary between about $800 million and $1 billion. Approximately 3,600 fires were set, destroying 1,100 buildings, with fire calls coming once every minute at some points. Widespread looting also occurred. (Wikipedia)

This poster shows Daryl Gates and George H. W. Bush (who was president at the time of the riots) on an inner city basketball court, against a chain link fence. The poster blatantly and deliberately copies and appropriates the famous poster for the 1992 basketball comedy “White Men Can’t Jump” (released in March) starring Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson. Gates stands in place of Snipes, with the word “Daryl” positioned over hishead, just as “Wesley” was positioned over Snipes’. Whereas Snipes looks calm, collected, and even intimidating, Gates looks nervous; Snipes’ orange baseball cap is gone to reveal Gates’ baldness and a comically large drop of sweat across his forehead. Whereas Snipes’ athletic jersey was blank, Gates’ says “Property of L.A.P.D.”

Similarly, George Bush, Sr. takes the place of Harrelson (with “George” written over his head, instead of “Woody”). The backwards baseball cap is still there, but the plain white t-shirt now reads “White Men Can’t Run The System” instead of “White Men Can’t Jump.” Like Gates, Bush, Sr. also looks worried; he is frowning. Furthermore, the basketball hoop that could be seen through the chain link fence in the movie poster is has become the Los AngelesCity Hall on fire. In place of the movie credits at the bottom of the poster is the phrase “From the Courts of Simi Valley, To the Streets of L.A” – a parodic echo of a generic tagline for a movie.

In the context of the movie, Snipes and Harrelson alternate between rivalry and friendship, ultimately ending up friends. In the context of the riots and the Rodney King verdict, Gates was sharply criticized charged with responsibility for the King incident, Bush Sr. notably expressed bewilderment over the acquittal of the L.A.P.D. officers. Whereas Gates can be clearly identified as an antagonist, Bush, Sr.’s case is more ambiguous: while he disapproves of the verdict, he similarly responsible as he is in charge of the country. More significant, however, is the fact that ultimately just as Snipes’ and Harrelson’s characters were engaged in the same sort of shady business and played the same game (and in the end, on the same team), so do Gates and Bush, Sr. Though the two may seem to be at opposite ends, they are really not so different from one another. The phrase “White Men Can’t Run The System” is saying two things at once: firstly, that white men are incapable of running the system and secondly, that they should not be allowed to do so.

For me one of the essential questions about this work is: why choose a comedyabout basketball as a background for social commentary regarding the King case and the L.A. riots? The simple answer is that a) it was culturally relevant at the time, as the movie was released a mere month before the riots and b) it took place in L.A., at VeniceBeach.However, in my mind, there seems to be something particularly unsettling,and therefore significant, about the fact that not only is the artist using a feel-good sports comedy as his source material, but that he is turning to light popular culture – specifically, the visual medium of cinema (produced primarily in Hollywood/Los Angeles no less)–in the process. Considering the amount of media coverage the two events received and how it was a video recording (made by a bystander) that exposed the L.A.P.D. officers’ brutality in the first place, one cannot underestimate the importance of the element of cinematic sensationalism. The Alcaraz’ viewer is forced to reconcile the pleasure of watching an action comedy set in L.A. that is evoked by the White Men Can’t Jump reference with the possibility of schadenfreudian pleasure of watching mass violence in L.A.on the evening news. The ethics of viewership and spectacle are being decidedly called into question.

]]>http://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/2011/06/11/the-cockroach-problem/feed/0Art as a Hammerhttp://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/2011/06/05/art-as-a-hammer/
http://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/2011/06/05/art-as-a-hammer/#commentsSun, 05 Jun 2011 20:50:21 +0000http://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/?p=16Continue reading →]]>This post is also long overdue so do forgive its length.

First off, I believe some introductions are in order.

I’m Karina Puttieva – a freshly minted Haverford grad who majored in English, concentrated in gender and sexuality studies, and minored in German. Some things about me:

Russian is my first language

I’m a coffee snob and only drink it black

I make lists and daily schedules like it’s my job

I think beets are delicious

I have a crippling fear of being tickled

I love Ultimate Frisbee

I get really excited when I hear people speaking German

I think these are the best earrings ever. ever.

Now that we got that out of the way, I ought to explain the title of this post.

One of the mounted posters at CSPG proclaims proudly that “Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to shape it.” (It attributes the quote to Brecht, which I’m pretty sure is right, though there are other sources that claim it’s Mayakovsky’s. But I digress.) Trite as it sounds, having worked at the center for about two weeks now, I’ve realized that that description is pretty much dead on. The center is a giant (huge) archive of political posters from every corner of the world, in just about every language, on every political issue imaginable.

But when it comes down to it, it is art. They are all pieces of art, much more so than pieces of propaganda or advertisements or leaflets calling for solidarity. The focus of what Kyle and I will be looking into is how political movements are depicted by established graphic artists and cartoonists, the techniques they use to make the shift from art to politicized art.

These couple of weeks at the CSPG I spent most of my time getting to know and mastering the archiving database system (Mimzy XG). I picked up some basics: how to properly handle and measure fragile materials and catalog them accordingly, consolidating folders of extra versions of certain posters so that they could be set aside to be sold or traded, spending some quality time with Photoshop and cropping images of posters to get them ready for digitization. Not mind-blowing work, but relevant insofar that the research that we’ll be starting on next week (!!!) cannot really be done unless you know your way around the archive and how to look for the right thing to begin with.

Thus far, I’ve seen a large amount of various styles and appropriations of familiar images in many different languages. Something that stood out was the variation in the balance between the amount of text and image on a particular poster; that is, how a given message changed depending on whether it was text-based or if it was primarily illustrated.

So that’s something to keep a close eye on.

]]>http://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/2011/06/05/art-as-a-hammer/feed/0Student Research Assistantshiphttp://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/2011/05/31/hello-world/
http://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/2011/05/31/hello-world/#commentsTue, 31 May 2011 14:34:53 +0000http://blogs.haverford.edu/political-graphics/?p=1Continue reading →]]>For their John B. Hurford ’60 Humanities Center sponsored Student Research Assistantship, Kyle McCloskey ’11 and Karina Puttieva ’11, English will spend 5 weeks at the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) in Los Angeles, a non-profit, tax-exempt educational and research archive that collects, preserves, documents, and circulates domestic and international political posters relating to historical and contemporary movements for social change. Learn more >
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